My open-source cure for brain cancer

The responses have been incredible. More than 200,000 people have visited the site and many have provided videos, poems, medical opinions, suggestions of alternative cures or lifestyles, personal stories of success or, sadly, failures — and simply the statement, “I am here.” Among them were more than 90 doctors and researchers who offered information and support.

The geneticist and TED fellow Jimmy Lin has offered to sequence the genome of my tumor after surgery — in an open-source platform, of course. And the Italian parliament has been debating a motion to make all patients’ medical records more open and accessible, which would be amazing progress in my country.

Within one day I also heard from two different doctors, who recommended similar kinds of surgery. The first version is “awake surgery,” which monitors the brain in real time as different parts are touched. The second is a variation in which electrodes are placed on the brain during surgery, and then a brain map is produced (with the patient awake) and used during a second surgery (with the patient fully unconscious).